The present invention relates to a marine float for use in conjunction with a glass fiber reinforced concrete floating dock system wherein a plurality of floats may be attached to one another and arranged in any desired configuration, and a method of fabricating the floats.
It has been known to utilize concrete in the manufacture of marine docks. Typically, the concrete docks of the prior art consisted of a plurality of generally rectangular concrete floats which were secured to one another to achieve a desired configuration for the dock. The floats generally consisted of a rather thick poured concrete shell surrounding a buoyant element that was either hollow or constructed of some buoyant material such as expanded polystyrene (earlier floats were hollow in concrete floating docks). The methods of attaching successive floats to one another vary. Such prior art dock system are, for example, described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,265,193, 4,318,361 and 3,779,192.
Use of concrete enhances the durability of the docks as concrete is less suspeptible to the adverse effects of water, salinity and wave action than traditional dock materials such as wood, and provides improved strength characteristics. The poured, standard aggregate concrete used in the docks of the prior art presented certain disadvantage in that it lacked adequate flexibility which is advantageous under the conditions of alternating stress imparted by wave action and in that its bulk and weight made it difficult to store and transport such docks.
The methods typically used to manufacture the concrete docks of the prior art involved the use of a form or mold into which concrete was poured to a predetermined height. The floating or buoyant portion of the dock section was then placed in the form and concrete poured around and on top of the buoyant portion to complete the float. This method of construction had drawbacks in that the process was extremely slow and required a good deal of time for the concrete of the dock to set and is therefore costintensive. Furthermore, manufacturing cost of molds are substantial and the method of constructions is restrictive in that it does not allow any flexibility in shape, size, and buoyancy of the float without changing the molds.